Goethe Yearbook

There is a passage in Schiller’s poetological writings that merits attention because it captures the essential paradox of Schillerian freedom and didactic intention. This is Schiller’s contention in “Uuml;ber Matthissons Gedichte” (1794) that “die höchste Freiheit gerade nur durch die höchste Bestimmtheit möglich ist.”¹ Within a discussion of landscape description in poetry, Schiller expands on the role of the poet, which is that of determining the reader’s sensations for the sake of receptivity to higher ideals. Clearly aware that his remarks on determination evoke coercion, Schiller tries to demonstrate that the paradox of determining thoughts and emotions while preserving the determinee’s freedom is merely apparent. He argues that the poet, who must be certain of his effects, but also respect the reader’s freedom, will prescribe for the reader exactly that path that the reader’s imagination would have taken in full freedom, a formulation that is as logically fraught as the pairing of freedom and determination. He then offers practical advice as to how to accomplish the task of prescribing that which would also be freely chosen. The key lies in apprehending the rules according to which the imagination functions:

Die Imagination in ihrer Freiheit folgt, wie bekannt ist, bloss dem Gesetz der Ideenverbindung, die sich ursprünglich nur auf einen zufälligen Zusammenhang der Wahrnehmungen in der Zeit, mithin auf etwas ganz Empirisches, grün-det. Nichts desto weniger muss der Dichter diesen empirischen Effekt der Association zu berechnen wissen, weil er nur insofern Dichter ist, als er durch eine freie Selbsthandlung unsrer Einbildungskraft seinen Zweck erreicht. Um ihn zu berechnen, muss er aber eine Gesetzmässigkeit darin entdecken und den empirischen Zusammenhang der Vorstellung auf Notwendigkeit zurück-führen können.

(8:1019)

Thus the poet has to gauge and exploit the arbitrary temporal succession of perceptions in his readers’ minds and, through his intuition of patterns within it, discover its necessity or general validity, which then puts him in a position to determine the process of reception. The specificity of Schiller’s instructions, which continue with indications that the poet must avail himself of general laws and speak to the species (Gattung) portion of the imagination and not the individual-subjective areas, belies the nature of the task. Schiller’s poet is called upon to calculate (berechnen) the ideation of a posited general [End Page 245] species imagination, discover the laws by which it operates, and, using this knowledge, dictate what a reader will freely think or imagine. As Schiller puts it, the writer must determine “das Spiel der Imagination unbeschadet ihrer Freiheit” and then further prescribe “den Empfindungszustand des Subjekts” (8:1019). If we move forward in time to the current world with its virtual worlds and video games, this is a procedure with strong affinities to game design, and I will return to this analogy or homology presently.

Once again, Schiller has described and charted mental or spiritual processes in relatively concrete detail, but the overall problems here are obvious: the reader’s freedom is to be exercised by following a goal-directed course that is determined by an outside agency. Of course Schiller posits the complete coincidence of this determination with what would have been the expression of the reader’s free will and thus parachutes out of the paradox, leaving us behind in the burning fuselage to ponder the contradictions inherent in this meticulously induced freedom.² The intentions of a determining external agent will in all likelihood diverge from the free choices of the subject to be determined and, if not, isn’t the agent superfluous? Had Schiller always defined freedom in this way (which he did not), he would have been a good spokesman for political absolutism (which he was not). But he did write of freedom in this vein and in these terms in his essay on Matthisson and in “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen” (1794),³ and early comments on the purpose of drama also reveal an intention to determine, which he does not or will not consider a violation of freedom.⁴

In...